


Ill

by mrhiddles



Category: Thor (Movies)
Genre: Insanity, M/M, Mental Instability, Warning: Loki, pretty much
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-10
Updated: 2013-08-10
Packaged: 2017-12-23 00:43:58
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 521
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/919981
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mrhiddles/pseuds/mrhiddles
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Loki is as Loki is. Ill and all too aware.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Ill

**Author's Note:**

> Things that lurk in my head when I can't sleep.

There was a time when he could look upon the sky and not see clouds of swarming grey, swollen and ripe with the threat of rain and ice. A time when he could manage to enter rooms without seeing the flicking of a black, bean-sized shadow dart across white, dipping and dodging over mirrors and inside grime. A time when gold sung with voices of untold stories and not the threat of lingering anger, glossed over with the shiny guilt of a babe slain in winter. Should have been but never was, never was, never was—

He feels insane.

He feels content.

There was a time he did not expect the clicking of jaw, the clench of teeth, the fist upon chest, but now they are like friends to him. To the sick minded and strong willed, stone hearted, triumphant, smug, sadistic smiling lunatic monster—

No.

No.

\--

They see when he looks at things two, three, four, skip to seven times and back again, flicking eyes anxious and wet and worried. They see when he bites his tongue to keep from stabbing tooth through lip with the anxious pull of string of heart inside his chest, painful and sinful and wonderful. He feels alive, and they see it, see that life tinged with the dark, the sickness also there.

A companion constant.

\--

In one life, a sick life, he held a young twist of Mistletoe. It curled fresh and green and soft between his fingers. He held it over yet more evil, terrible things. Things that would worry at the roots of the great Ash more so even than the lascivious snake that gnawed ceaselessly upon them.

It took an hour of shadows playing at the corner wedged between cauldron and frothing potion to convince himself he had to burn it. To rid the world of the terrible, cloying darkness that would so inevitably seep from that pot, from his mind, to devour the world. The arching dart that would fly proud from his palm to the heart of the guarded.

There was a scar on his arm from the heat. Years, and years ago.

Years it seems, but only months, or days, or hours, seconds...

\--

He wonders if it will go on forever. He remembers it had not always been like this.

Sometimes there are tears in his eyes, but it feels too good to stop.

They say his name, they call him brother, they, they...

Thor.

\--

He thinks he’s ill.

But there is his brother, ever shining and golden and _sane_ —

Telling him it’s okay. That he loves him, that he isn’t alone, that they can be together—

He doesn’t think about it anymore.

Life is as it has become, and with that, with this, with the repetition, he is fine.

He is content.

And so does dull the daily motion of the world, slow and burning and horrid, painted over with whispers on the tongue of false kin. Promising the protection of one who claims themselves impenetrable. For the sickness, the shadow, protects him.

Only ever in this, only ever in shadow.

Flickering and untrustworthy as it is.


End file.
